Start As You Really Don’t Mean To Go On

2012 is getting off to a slow start. A very slow start. I think a glacier just overtook us. Also glaciers do a better job of picking up shit and moving it. Gah.
Major Dragon was on festive holiday. This means she spent a lot of time at home in front of the tv.  Fatal for a shopping channel addict let me tell you, FATAL.  (don’t even ask. Well do, I will likely tell that tale in the next post)
We did end 2011 well.  There were plans and the MAJOR RUBBISH UPLIFT.  I lifted my eyes to the skies and could have sworn I heard clutter cleaning angels singing.  I am a bit capslocky in my emotion here. For we got rid of the Table.
The story of the Table. (you knew there was going to be one) Major Dragon came home one day with it.  A workmate was throwing it out and naturally MD couldn’t turn it down. A metal picnic table. Rusting and manky. I shrieked in horror but no, MD had a plan. (you knew there was going to be one of those too) She was going to put this table up in our narrow hoarded kitchen and put things on it while she sorted them. This naturally didn’t go well. In a hoarded house any surface is a storage space. Cans went out of date in the actual kitchen storage behind the table.  You cooked at the hob leaning in over the table from the centre of the kitchen.  We had a table argument every year FOR YEARS. I would clear it off and fold it down and go away for a few days or something and whoops, the table would magically pop up again in all its rusty glory, smugly greeting me as I returned to the kitchen and gritted my teeth at the sight of it covered in yet more hoarded stuff.   2011 was where I hit my kitchen limit. I started to clear it out. Not at speed. I just quietly started putting things in the bin. An extra binbag a week in the autumn. Finally a couple of months later I was starting to see a kitchen again. The bin started to get too full too fast.  And I got ill again as I always seem to in winter.  The darkness and the chaos start to get to me then little bugs grow into more and more horrific things as I get depressed and then run down.  I think I might actually be solar powered.  My battery strength definitely lessens in the winter months.  The kitchen started to sink back into the mire. 
The trouble with undoing hoarding is things are resting on things which are resting on things which are stacked on top of something else.  You start moving, well you better move fast.  It isn’t tidying.  It is fighting.  You are fighting a room for supremacy. You are fighting goddamn gravity.  You stop without preparation and you will have a landslide.  When you clear you clear using every part of your body.  Sometimes the only thing between you and concussion is a swift elbow.  You can of course just let stuff collapse to the floor and sort from there but really that is the final phase if you can possibly manage it.  Working on your hands and knees is depressing.  It hurts. Particularly when doing an entire room. Sure you can sit on the floor but that is for considered sorting.  And to be honest, I find I slow when I sit on the floor.  I get cranky with pins and needles from crossed legs, I start sneezing from dust.  And if the exhaustion overtakes me, I have discovered I will nap on anything while down there.   Even filled binbags.   So to ensure dignity and actual clearing I stay away from the floor till strictly necessary.  Which isn’t difficult considering what we have in here. 
So there I was, my ninja clearing becoming slower and slower.  Before it ground to a complete halt I rang Reformed Dragon in desperation.  A week later, she arrived. With a steely eyed Break and Bin expression on.  10+ bin bags later she advanced on the table. Out the back door it went while I cheered and danced.  And there it stayed for a couple of weeks, stacked against the bags of rubbish that wouldn’t fit in the bin.  All was peaceful. MD had managed to part with some sentimental things, like a jumbo sized rice steamer that had belonged to her mother and was nearly as old as I am, with surprisingly little heartburning.  I should have realised we may have won the table battle that day but we had not won the war.  I had to go away for a weekend.  I left MD filled with zeal about how she was going to continue the kitchen clear. 
I forgot her original plan.  And also the fact she gets overwhelmed easily without someone holding her to the sticking point.  I thought at the very worst she just wouldn’t have done anything.
I was wrong.

OF COURSE SHE RESCUED THE BUCKLED AND RUSTY TABLE FROM THE RUBBISH PILE TO TRAIL CRAP OVER THE CLEAN KITCHEN FLOOR. OF COURSE.
And here is where we all remember that hoarding is a mental illness. 
Well I did after I did this.

And texted the table pic to RD so she could have a good swear at it. “PUT IT BACK OUT! JUST PUT IT BACK OUT!”  she yelled.  With a lot more bad language.  
By now I was completely done reasoning with MD.  Nothing on that kitchen was going on that table. I didn’t care if she found a new lifeform in the back of the fridge, it was not going on that damn table, it would catch something.  I lifted it straight out the back door again when MD was out.  When she asked where it had gone I told her it was weighting down the rubbish bags we still hadn’t gotten rid of in the winter’s strong winds.  Then bless the skies for they snowed on it and finished off buckling it nicely.   When the winds died down I organised the mighty rubbish angels of the council to come and take away our bagged former kitchen hoard.  (they still sing to me)  We dragged the rubbish bags on the table to the street for the uplift and MD only tried a small argument about the table.  I regarded it as a tiny verbal hoarding hiccup of an argument.
THEN I REJOICED FOR THE SAGA OF THE TABLE, IT WAS OVER!
Oh.  Well no it wasn’t.
Unfortunately for me a Hoarder never forgets.  MD can’t remember what she had for dinner yesterday, what I said to her five minutes ago, where she left her favourite pair of trousers that were just in her hand…but she will never forget that table.  And when she is allowed into the kitchen unsupervised she remembers.  A month later and she is still bringing up the table when she is out of sorts and remembering her kitchen plan.  She hasn’t done anything in the kitchen because she can’t. Because I ruined the plan.  If the table was in the kitchen then it would happen.  Interestingly she forgets the table was there for four years or so waiting for this plan. Pointing out there are other tables in the house is also not a winner since Surface = Storage Space if you remember.  And apparently they would be ruined by a sojourn in the kitchen. (I have no idea.) Hiccups always come back, don’t they? Sigh.
So what have I learned from the Great Table Saga of 2011?
Well only that, when my tutor at university asked us if tables change our perception of reality…? I should have maybe taken him a tiny bit more seriously.

A Very Hoardy Xmas

Well it was and it wasn’t.
Tensions usually arise in November for planning the Dragon Family festive celebrations.  Major Dragon hates leaving the Hoard house.  She treasures hopes that after a couple of days effort, Christmas can be had here.  The rest of the Dragons remember the previous years that involved either 3 months hard labour for me in a desperate effort to find the dining room or all Dragon visitors prepared to do a couple of hours panicky clean up while Major Dragon fetches Elderly Dragon.  A particular highlight was the year when MD had actually sorted ten binbags of clothes for charity.  I spent more than six months jumping over them in the hall as she found more and more reasons not to take them to the charity shop.  Finally on Christmas day, all the dragons lifted and threw them in the garage so we could all get freely in and out of the door. Five years or so later they are still there and the leaking garage probably has destined them for landfill sadly. 
After that Reformed Dragon began the campaign to just have Christmas at her house since it had been cleaned up. Took two years to achieve it by dint of much arguing but the last 3  or 4 have been held there.  We know it will be, MD knows it it will be but she still likes to dig her heels in and argue against making a decision till we are in the December Dash (feels like more of a 100m sprint by then) and RD swears hugely about getting the food in in time and everything that is needed for a family of mostly picky eaters.  And MD panics about driving over, what if it snows, rains, fogs? This year we added to the drama by instead of buying physical gifts for MD and ED (one to save the Hoard and second to save money since ED covets things, never uses them and will give them back to you about a week later) we booked a hotel room for them just down the road from RD. No driving home and MD would get the chance to sleep on a bed that isn’t half covered in boxes (she sleeps on about a third of it) and ED loves hotels and most importantly hotel breakfasts. She is getting to the age of not bothering to eat due to the effort it takes. MD panicked about getting lost, what if they didn’t let them in after ten, what if there was no staff over Christmas.  She panicked so much about that, that come Christmas Eve at 10pm she still wasn’t actually prepared for Christmas. No clean clothes (hadn’t handed them over for washing despite reminders all week) and she had lost everyone’s Christmas gifts.  Not that this is any surprise.  In general if there is somewhere we have to be the following day, party, family gathering, holiday, I resign myself to no sleep that night whatsoever. By the time I have aided MD and sorted myself out I usually get a couple of hours nap in the morning if I am lucky. I am so used to catching up on sleep on a journey the sound of train noise on one of those ambient sound apps knocks me out in about ten minutes.
But fear not Readers! Tiny Tim The Harassed Dragons had their Christmas. With gifts. And the dinner was only slightly cold and dried out after Major Dragon went on a small hotel hunting tour with Elderly Dragon.  Still, they were only an hour and half late.  Which is pretty good going.  I could tell you hair curling stories about the 8 hours for a 1 hour journey the last time I let them wander off by themselves. This grey hair is not due to age.
So what did we achieve in the Hoard since this post was mostly taken up with the Digging for Freedom we generally do to escape it temporarily?
WE HAD A RUBBISH UPLIFT.
Oh yes. And hopefully the first of many. I stride towards the new year, binbags in hand and a burning light in my eyes.  But the Saga of the Rubbish Uplift is a Homeric Hymn for another day as this post is quite long enough.
Our New Year Resolution is to have next Christmas back at the Hoard. (I promised this if MD agreed to Christmas at RD’s this year)
I hope that 2012 brings you everything you need and the appropriate storage place to put it.
I hope it brings me that too.

Ding Dong Avon Hoarding

Major Dragon is an Avon Lady.  Not your hoof the streets, ringing doorbells one, just selling to workmates and friends. So every three weeks or so another couple of boxes of stuff arrive in The Dragon Hoard.  You know where this is going don’t you? That is right. MD gets a sale book and gets spending.  She used to have dreams of a sale or an Avon party when she sold it all off.  Only it turns out when she tried to sell sale items, of course, there had been a reason they were cheap.  And of course, no party.  (Well maybe little elves could have one in the microwave. I would like some elves in here)  Very little was sold. And most of that wasn’t particularly sold at a profit as the folk she was trying to sell to regarded something for a pound as not cheap enough. So in a box it went. Then another box. 5 years later… well I am not brave enough to count it up.  I just stacked the boxes so I could get past them and carried on. It got to the stage that MD had no idea how much stuff she owned. She still doesn’t.
My sister (she should really have a dragon name like the rest of us shouldn’t she? Reformed Dragon? RD?) on one of her break and bin missions to the Dragon Hoard turned to Major Dragon while she was running through the excuses, about to shout, stopped and started to think. She went home and rang back. “Right. I am going to get my boyfriend to give me a lift over in a week. You have the Avon stuff ready to go and I will take it away and sell it on ebay”  This is a pretty big thing to offer since RD IS really a reformed hoarder.  Unfortunately she had to have a bit of a breakdown to do it.  Taking boxes of extra stuff into her home is no easy thing for her. MD gratefully accepted. But nothing happened. Gentle prodding got nowhere. I rang RD and said “maybe you should leave it this week.  There is nothing ready to go.”
And we waited.
A fortnight later RD lost patience and started shouting at MD on the phone who was all defensive and pointed out RD hadn’t been over anyway. This dragon hid in the kitchen till they finished snipping at each other.  A day was finally set. RD was going to get her boyfriend to drive her over after his work to collect stuff.  MD had another week to put together some Avon boxes to leave.
And we waited.
Two days before RD was due to turn up nothing had been done.  I was really torn.  It really isn’t my stuff.  It has value.  She buys it as xmas gifts and that is bearing down on us at great speed.  She really buys a lot of it for herself.  I wanted her to sort it in to vague price ranges. Say like 5 quid or under, £5 – £10 and £10+.  Three boxes and just lob each item in one according to value till you needed a new box.  In hindsight this was a serious mistake.
See, part of hoarding is being stymied by where to start to fix it. MD has a thing that she can’t begin something till she has made space for it.  Something that, with the current state of the Hoard is completely impossible. So she makes a grand plan. Then gets discouraged as her mind will not head to the really crucial bit of the grand plan, the actual point of it.  Which is probably somewhere round number 3 or even 5 on the list.
How did MD stop herself this time?
MD’s Grand Plan
1) Clear dining room (a room that is currently completely out of commission) this was to -
2) Clear living room (a room reduced to a single hamster track through and one free seat.) so MD could -
3) Empty out the sets of storage drawers filled with Avon.
4) Then sort it.
5) Then stack it up for RD to collect.
She of course, had added in a load of side “quests” like finding the expensive iron she has lost, possibly in the dining room. She put it somewhere as she hadn’t wanted to use it till the Hoard was cleared. About 3 or 4 years ago. Then her iron broke this year. So she bought another cheap one as the expensive one has wandered off.  But she hates it.  Most of the Hoard discussion is never really focused on since if you talk about clearing an area she sits wondering out loud if that is where the expensive iron is.  By the time we find that damn thing I will have to restrain myself from breaking and binning it so I can stop being haunted by the ghost of it drifting above the Hoard on little puffs of steam.
So we have an argument.  Where I point out it would be a hell of a lot simpler if she just tipped the drawers into boxes or bags and never mind 1) and 2) since WTF is she doing etc etc. (note: wrong thing to do. Great for a good yell, pointless for progress)  And she went into teenager mode of how much we bully her and her stuff and she can make her own decisions and WHERE IS SHE SUPPOSED TO PUT THE SORTED STUFF THEN.  Since sidling around it for a couple of days is far more traumatic than setting off a stuff avalanche across the whole of our ground floor and getting nowhere.  Ye gods and little fishes.
One day left. Still nothing. RD phones and I try not to sound like I want to shut MD in a storage drawer and running screaming into the night. RD shouts a bit. By 2am MD has lifted out two the aforementioned storage drawers filled with Avon and stacked them on the floor.  Right.
Avon Leaving Day dawns. While MD is out at work I head for a stack of Avon boxes used as a table in the upstairs hall. And find one whole box full of nothing but Avon books from about four or five years ago.  Ooookay. I have no idea why but she finds it impossible to recycle them.  I keep digging and sorting and compress the contents of the boxes into one large box for RD. 
MD calls to say she is leaving work.  I remind her that she has an hour till RD and boyfriend show up.  An hour and a half later RD and her man arrive, having been slowed by bad weather, just as I am dragging jumbo box down the stairs.  And then I fall.  Thankfully only two steps from the bottom but ow.  No sign of MD.  Has it all become too much for her and she has ran away from home?  Has she had an accident?  No answer from her phone (I may have left a swearie message or two)  Half an hour later there is still no sign. RD and I are both ranting angrily and apologising to each other for shouting when we aren’t angry at each other while her boyfriend watches with lowering brow as he hasn’t had his dinner yet.  Never leave a man unfed. I thought he was going to start chewing the Avon in desperation.  Actually with the stress I nearly was myself.  They were just on the verge of taking the box and two drawer contents and leaving when lo, in drifts MD full of righteous excuse “I work you know!” which would have worked slightly better if she hadn’t phoned when leaving work nearly two hours earlier. Harrumph. 
However it did work out in a crazy way.  Faced with three very angry people MD was suddenly filled with Avon ridding zeal and about 15 minutes later the car left with about 6 boxes worth.
We did promise MD that there would be a final decision made on the stuff and discussions of value etc over Facetime or Skype before it gets put on ebay.  But now the stuff has left we all feel that we don’t need to have it back.  And the gods know we could use any money made from it. 
A long long story of the last month at The Dragon Hoard. And a longer road travelled than most trying to part company with bottles of shower gel. 
But for us here at the Hoard, well, the end to this story? *looks at number of emptied drawers*  You might call that our very own Christmas miracle.
Of course if there are any elves maybe with time on their hands and people in dire need of eyeliner and moisturiser, please feel free to give us some further festive miracles.